Wellspring of Life

Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life. Proverbs 4:23
Cast not your pearls before swine. Matthew 7:6

Our hearts are very precious things. Sometimes I fear we prostitute our souls and innermost beings in order to bridge the gap between us and others we wish to be close to. We share personal things and sometimes even pray together to create a forced sense of intimacy rather than letting a genuine bond form. It is manipulative and a lack of faith to try to take such fragile things into our own hands.

I need the faith to trust that God is going to bring all things together for the good of those that love Him.

I know that I personally tend to wear my heart on my sleeve. Then the phrase, "what you see is what you get" pops into my head. That scares me. I desperately hope that there is more to me than meets the eye, that I have a beauty and value to unveil, but only at the right time to the right person. Sometimes I fear that I am no more than my outward persona.

But on some level I know that when I was designed there was far more placed in me than even I know; that over time different aspects and qualities will be revealed. I need not put my qualities on display, but rather allow them to be discovered.

Our hearts are easily damaged. We need to make sure that the people who have access to that part of us are not the sort that will mishandle such a privilege. And it is a privilege to be admitted into someone's heart. We have forgotten that discretion is the better part of valor and certain things should be shared on a need-to-know basis. We all have treasure that God has placed inside of us and we shouldn't stick things of such value out in the open.

Things that we hold dear we protect. Our money is secure in a bank or safe. Should we not give our hearts better care than our finances? The thing that's difficult with our hearts is the paradox of protecting it and still being able to open up at the right time. We don't want to be embedded behind the walls of a fortress but neither do we want our hearts so accessible that they can be abused and left behind. We need to be vulnerable to God and open with a select few individuals. Finding the balance is difficult but possible to achieve.

As the great theologian Ben Parker put it: "With great power comes great responsibility". We must make sure to take as good care of the hearts of others that we would have ours taken care of. We should not put others into temptation or compromising positions, but do everything we can to draw the people around us not toward us, but toward God.

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence."-Ben Franklin